Case Study
Boosting Accounting Productivity with a Custom Cloud-Based Xero Integration
Who we worked with:
TSL Lighting
What we did:
Strategy + Architecture + Design + Build + Improve
TSL Lighting is one of the UK’s leading specialists in event lighting and rigging. With a consistently high volume of projects, the team faced a time-consuming challenge: manually transferring customer and account data from their internal CRM, HireTrack, into Xero. To streamline this process, we developed a seamless integration between HireTrack and Xero, leveraging modern cloud-based technologies to ensure reliability and scalability. Now, whenever a user is created in HireTrack, the integration automatically syncs the data with Xero in real time. Since its launch, this solution has saved TSL’s accounts team hundreds of hours in manual data entry each year.
The Client
Company Name:
TSL Lighting
Industry:
Event Lighting & Rigging
What They Do:
TSL Lighting provides both rental (dry hire) and full-service project management for live productions. Their work supports a diverse range of events — from concerts and theatre to exhibitions and corporate shows — across the UK, Europe, and globally.
Why They Approached Us:
TSL chose to work with us because of our proven track record in solving complex technical challenges. They recognised our expertise in systems integration and cloud-based solutions, and trusted our team to deliver a robust, scalable outcome that would streamline their operations.
- Sam Tamplin, Managing Director
The Challenge
To achieve the desired outcome, we needed to overcome several complex technical challenges. One of the primary obstacles was that TSL’s CRM, HireTrack, was hosted on their internal network — making it inaccessible to our cloud-based systems by default. To bridge this gap securely, we designed not just a software solution, but an entire supporting architecture. This included secure communication between the local network and the cloud, ensuring data integrity and reliability throughout the process.
For a clearer understanding, please refer to the simplified architectural diagram below.
The Solution
While the system includes a lightweight front-end web app for monitoring, the majority of its operations run quietly in the background — efficiently handling new data, triggering relevant cloud-hosted functions, and seamlessly integrating with Xero to create or update records.
Key features of the integration include automatic creation and updating of the following in Xero:
- Contacts
- Invoices
- Purchase Orders
- Projects
Beyond data entry, the system ensures ongoing synchronisation between HireTrack and Xero. For example, if an invoice is marked as PAID in Xero, that status is reflected in TSL’s CRM, keeping both systems accurate and up to date.
Hosting the solution in the cloud has brought significant benefits to both TSL and our team. It’s enabled us to leverage modern technologies to optimise performance, maintain reliability, and ensure long-term flexibility as the system evolves.